To find out more about how we can help support your organisation with crisis communications and preparedness
Click hereThe challenge
Most crisis communications training is theoretical: a slide deck, a framework, a discussion. It rarely tests whether a leadership team can actually hold their nerve, coordinate a response and protect their organisation’s reputation while the story is still moving underneath them.
Cognitas Global and Mangold Consultancy set out to close that gap with a single, fast-moving question put to a room of senior leaders: could your organisation protect its reputation under pressure?
Our approach
Crisis Communications in Action brought together Mangold Consultancy’s specialist reputation and media-handling experience and Cognitas Global’s immersive exercising expertise and platform, in a CPD-accredited tabletop exercise delivered on 9 July 2026 at Park Plaza County Hall, London with delegates from communications, corporate affairs, HR, PR and social media, and operational incident response backgrounds.
Delegates were placed inside a realistic real-time simulation delivered through view360global, Cognitas Global’s immersive exercising platform. Multimedia injects, live media pressure and evolving stakeholder demands recreated the pace and ambiguity of a genuine incident as it happened – not a scripted walkthrough of one.
The exercise unfolded across three escalating sessions, each one ratcheting up the pressure delegates had to manage in real time. It opened with emerging risks and online escalation, as an initial incident developed, spread through social and drew the first flickers of stakeholder concern; moved into a phase of operational strain and media pressure, where scrutiny intensified, live enquiries from journalists began landing and leadership faced its first real communication challenges. It closed with delegates pushed into strategic decision-making, high-stakes executive communications and a reputational response that had to hold up under sustained, unrelenting pressure.
As one delegate put it:
“It’s incredible. You really are put into what feels like an actual crisis. It’s very real, and you have to think fast.”
Every decision and rationale determined by the delegates was captured as it happened, giving facilitators Abby Mangold (Mangold Consultancy) and Lawrie Day (Cognitas Global) a real evidence base for structured feedback after each session with a closing strategic learning review capturing key insights and lessons identified across the day – not a general impression of how the event went.
The value
The value of running a live simulation isn’t the event itself – it’s what it exposes about an organisation’s actual readiness. For this cohort, that included:
- A tested answer, not a theoretical one. Delegates left with a working sense of “what happens should the worst occur,” rehearsed under pressure rather than assumed on paper.
- How fast unverified information hardens into fact. First-hand experience of the speed at which early, unsubstantiated claims can set the narrative before anyone has a chance to correct them.
- Where ownership breaks down. A clearer, shared sense of why a crisis needs a named, dedicated owner for communications – not just a plan that assumes someone will step up.
- The limits of passive training. Confidence that scenario-based exercising surfaces gaps that a “someone talks, you take notes” session simply doesn’t reach – as one delegate from the cybersecurity sector put it, teams handle a real scenario more effectively once they’ve rehearsed something like it in advance.
In their words – some feedback from delegates
“It’s important to be prepared and thinking to yourself, okay, what happens should the worst occur? If you’ve got that plan, it should make things easier.”
“The platform was very easy to use. The messaging felt authentic, so it felt like a real scenario we were being faced with. What I really love is the truly immersive nature of the platform – the way the injects are presented is just fantastic, and people respond to that. It feels as close to real as it can be.”
“Operating in a cybersecurity space, we always advocate for tabletop exercises. Any scenario you’re going to be faced with, you’re going to be able to deal with more effectively if you’ve rehearsed a similar situation.”
Key takeaway
Whether or not you were in the room on 9 July, the underlying question doesn’t change: if a crisis broke tomorrow, would your leadership team be executing a rehearsed plan or improvising one for the first time in public?
Crisis Communications in Action reflects the wider proposition Cognitas Global and Mangold Consultancy bring to leadership teams: pressure-test decision-making before a real incident forces the issue, using immersive, evidence-generating exercising rather than passive training.
If you’re weighing up whether your organisation could hold its reputation together under real pressure, get in touch to discuss a tailored session for your leadership or communications team.
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